From: Matt Mencel <MR-Mencel@...>
Date: 2010-04-02T03:13:07+09:00
Subject: Dynamic Method Calls

Right now I have some inefficient code that looks like this...

LdapAccount is my model.... and record.attributes is a hash of attribute name,value pairs.


records.each do |record|
      LdapAccount.create(:uid => record.attributes["uid"].to_s) do |c|
        c.buildingname = record.attributes["buildingName"].to_s if record.attributes.has_key?("buildingName")
        c.cn = record.attributes["cn"].to_s if record.attributes.has_key?("cn")
        c.department = record.attributes["department"].to_s if record.attributes.has_key?("department")
        c.displayname = record.attributes["displayName"].to_s if record.attributes.has_key?("displayName")
        c.employeetype = record.attributes["employeeType"].to_s if record.attributes.has_key?("employeeType")
        c.givenname = record.attributes["givenName"].to_s if record.attributes.has_key?("givenName")
        c.homedirectory = record.attributes["homeDirectory"].to_s if record.attributes.has_key?("homeDirectory")
        c.mail = record.attributes["mail"].to_s if record.attributes.has_key?("mail")
      end
end


There's probably 20 or more attributes I'll eventually be checking...I'm working with tens of thousands of records....and not all records have values for every attribute.  So rather than do all the extra wasted work, I'd really like to be able to do something simpler like this...

records.each do |record|
      LdapAccount.create(:uid => record.attributes["uid"].to_s) do |c|
          record.attributes.each_pair do |k,v|
              c.k = v
          end
      end
end

...but I get...
undefined method `k=' for #<LdapAccount:.....>

Did a little research and read about the send method....so I tried this...

c.send(k = v)


...but I get... (in this case the String value of v = "smtp.wiu.edu")
["smtp.wiu.edu"] is not a symbol


So I'm not sure I understand how to use the send method in this case.  Can anyone offer some insight?  Am I headed in the right direction or is there a better way to do this.

Thanks,
Matt